Samir Okasha approaches evolutionary biology from a philosophical perspective in Agents and Goals in Evolution, analysing a mode of thinking in biology called agential thinking. He considers how the paradigm case involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an agent pursuing a goal, such as survival or reproduction, and seeing its phenotypic traits as strategies for achieving that goal or furthering its biological interests. As agential thinking deliberately transposes a set of concepts¿goals, interests, strategies¿from rational human agents and to the biological world more generally, Okasha''s enquiry firstly looks at the justification for this: is it mere anthropomorphism, or does it play a genuine intellectual role in the science? From this central question, key points are considered such as: how do we identify the ''goal'' that evolved organisms will behave as if they are trying to achieve? Can agential thinkingever be applied to groups rather than to individual organisms? A
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How much faith should we place in what scientists tell us? Is it possible for scientific knowledge to be fully ''objective''? What, really, can be defined as science? In the second edition of this Very Short Introduction, Samir Okasha...
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Over the last forty years the philosophy of biology has emerged as an important sub-discipline of the philosophy of science. Covering some of science''s most divisive topics, such as philosophical issues in genetics, it also encompasses areas...
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What is a language? What do scientific grammars tell us about the structure of individual languages and human language in general? What kind of science is linguistics? These and other questions are the subject of Ryan M. Nefdt''s Language, Science,...
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Science is remarkably reliable. It puts people on the moon, performs laser eye surgery, tells us about ancient civilizations and species, and predicts the future of our climate. What underwrites this reliability? This book argues that the standard answers¿the...
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